1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to a method and apparatus for producing work holding members. More particularly, it pertains to a novel and improved method and apparatus for manufacturing unique and precisely formed work holding nests that are especially suitable for maintaining articles of jewelry or the like in a substantially stationary condition so that the latter can be conveniently worked upon.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the field of jewelry making, it is a highly desirable practice to maintain various jewelry articles which are to be worked upon in a proper and stationary position for various work forming operations to be performed thereon. Heretofore known approaches for accomplishing such include work holding jewelry nests which have been used in such applications as electrochemical deburring and jewelry polishing. Typically, these known kinds of jewelry nests are formed primarily manually. It will, of course, be recognized that, as a result of this manual process, it is extremely difficult to obtain a cavity pattern formed in such work holding jewelry nest members which corresponds to the configuration of the individual pieces of jewelry which are to be received by the nest. Of course, this generally manual approach towards producing work holding jewelry nest members for jewelry items not only fails to provide a process which leads to the manufacture of such nests with precisely formed cavities, but also is unable to facilitate the formation of a plurality of nest members having nest cavities which are identically precisely formed.
With imprecisely formed cavities there are presented substantial defects since nest cavities not having a preciseness in configuration have wide variations between the formed mold cavity and the jewelry item to be held. Consequently, such condition makes it virtually impossible to freely secure a jewelry item in such nest member. Accordingly, during subsequent jewelry working operations, there would exist a significant tendency for the jewelry items to drift or to become misaligned relative to the nest. The attendant drawbacks associated with this misalignment can be appreciated whenever the jewelry nests would be used in devices wherein the jewelry items would have to remain substantially stationary as they are advanced to a plurality of work forming positions, whereby the accurate positioning of these items is necessary for the proper working operation to be performed thereon. As a consequence thereof, such tendency for having the jewelry item drift or become misaligned will render the jewelry nest member ineffective for purposes of performing its intended function.
From the preceding considerations, it will be apparent that heretofore known jewelry type work holding nests as well as the techniques for forming such nest members have been ineffective in forming members having cavities with precisely formed cavities which are identiccal to the configuration of the jewelry items which are to be carried thereby, much less effectively enable the formation of a multitude of jewelry nest members, each of which has a precisely formed nest cavity that virtually minimizes or eliminates any tendency for the jewelry item to drift or become misaligned during subsequent jewelry working operations.